Even President Trump has his limits when it comes to mocking nicknames, he told Sean Hannity on Thursday evening, as he explained how he settled on “Sleepy Joe” for a Democratic candidate famous for a hands-on approach to campaigning.
“A lot of people wanted me to change the word sleepy to something else that rhymes with it,” he said about former Vice President Joe Biden. “Does that make sense to you?
“And I thought it was too nasty.”
Biden, 76, entered the Democratic race earlier in the day despite frequent allegations that he touched women without permission.
But Trump said Biden’s weakness was that he lacked the energy for high-level negotiations with world leaders such as President Xi Jinping of China.
“I have known him for a while, he is a pretty sleepy guy. He won’t be able to deal with President XI,” he said. “I will tell you.”
Senior Republicans believe Biden’s blue-collar credentials, centrist politics, and folksy charm may represent the biggest challenge to Trump’s grip on the White House, although he will have to overcome a propensity for gaffes.
Trump’s nicknames became a feature of his unlikely primary win ahead of the 2016 election helping dispatch “low-energy” Jeb Bush from the race.
And during a 45-minute interview on Fox News, the president offered a pithy rundown of the other front-runners among the 20-strong Democratic field.
Bernie Sanders, who has trailed only Biden in early polls, was dismissed for failing to achieve results in the Senate.
“I think he talks a lot,” said Trump. “Does he get it done?”
Beto O’Rourke was nothing more than a flash in the pan, he said, as Texans had realized during the midterm elections last year when he lost to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
“They figured it all out,” he said. “He is fading very fast, he is fading very, very fast. It looks like he will be a thing of the past very soon, but he was a hot item for a little while.”
Kamala Harris, the California senator, “has got a little bit of a nasty wit, but that might be it,” he said, while Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., would not survive the primary.
“I’m rooting for him, but he is not going to make it,” he said.
